President Lyndon Johnson, with former President Harry Truman looking on, signs the Medicare bill in 1965 / Associated Press

by David Jackson, USA TODAY

by David Jackson, USA TODAY

One of the things that bugs President Obama's aides is the Lyndon Johnson comparison.

The critics say Obama should be like LBJ, getting more involved in legislation by schmoozing, lobbying, and -- if necessary -- threatening lawmakers to get what he wants from Congress.

It's a bad reference, Obama's people say.

"I have great reverence for the legislative skills of Lyndon Johnson," Obama adviser David Axelrod told John Harwood of The New York Times and CNBC -- but LBJ inherited a solidly Democratic Congress and immense public support in the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

"He came to office at an unusual time, as the successor to a martyred president," Axelrod said. "Took his program and passed it."

Obama, meanwhile, faces a more divided Congress, and a U.S. House run by conservative Republicans.

Critics revived the LBJ analogy after Obama lost a key gun control vote last month in the Democratic Senate, but it has been around a while.

One reason: Last year's publication of the latest installment in Robert Caro's multi-volume biography of Johnson. The Passage of Power details how Johnson seized control of the government after Kennedy's murder, paving the way for congressional approval of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In his critique, Axelrod might also have mentioned LBJ's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, carrying with him immense Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. That led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Medicare, and a raft of Great Society legislation. (Also remember that Johnson honed his legislative skills during a dozen years in the Senate, most of them spent as party leader.)

Having a fully Democratic Congress helps, as Obama well knows. During his first two years in office, with a Democratic House and Senate, Obama signed a landmark health care plan, a major stimulus bill, and new rules for financial firms.

Axelrod, a long-time aide to Obama, did mention that another activist president -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- struggled with domestic legislation after running afoul of Congress over his plan to pack the Supreme Court.

"Franklin Roosevelt, who is revered as another master, took on Congress on the Supreme Court in 1938, and never passed a major piece of domestic legislation again for the rest of his presidency," Axelrod said. "So there's a little bit of mythology that grows up around people."

(We must note: Domestic legislation became less of a priority for FDR when World War II broke out.)

All that said, Axelrod also told Harwood about Obama: "Has he changed the overall gestalt of Washington, the pathology of Washington? Has he cracked that code yet? No."